Punkin

I never updated on my weekend of fun, and I was kind of hoping to do that today, but I don't really feel like it, so instead I'll just show you a picture of my dog when he knows there's a brand new tennis ball on the table . This is usually totally not allowed - the paws on the table thing - but because I'm a sucker for him and for a good shot, I let it happen. I'm clearly weakening in my old age.

Punkinhead has gone deaf overnight, it seems, which is freaking us all out, so I feel compelled to post something that shows his...life force, as it were. When I finally must post the worst news ever about him, please pray for me, because I'm goin' down, folks. I won't be mobile, and I won't give a shit about any rainbow bridge or anything else for a while. This dog has been in my life for 11 years now. I picked him up from some lady's kitchen in Ohio when he was five weeks old, and in one way or another have never put him down, so it's tough to watch him get old and change, although that seems to be my lot these days. He's outlasted two states, a few boyfriends, maybe six or seven jobs, and a million states of mind...and he still loves me and hangs out with me when so much else has left me hanging and confused. He lets me cry into his side while I rub his ears occasionally, and when he doesn't do that, he stands by the bed or the couch or beside me on the floor on the worst days and paces worriedly until I quit. He let my other dog boss him around until her lungs gave out, and he walked through that weird time of grief and readjustment (just past 9/11, no less) to claim a space of justified alpha-doggedness. He's survived epilepsy, blood disease, colitis, a transition from the Midwest to the East Coast, a period of months where I made him dance to "Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da" with his sister and me everyday, and the suburbs. He is - absolutely - the most consistent thing in my life. So now that he can't really hear, and he doesn't immediately come to the door when I come through it, and I have to search the house in a panic for him only to find him passed out asleep upstairs in the folds of the comforter (a spot he loves, and where I'd much rather be, all things considered) or even in weird spaces like by the dryer, I get so anxious, every time. He wakes up, staggering, as is his way, with his face all wrinkled up from where it's been smooshed against the floor. But no matter how knocked out he's been, it usually happens that he bolts immediately for his ball, because even though he's old and deaf he still likes to play second only to how much he likes to eat, which is a lot.

Describing how I feel about him sounds kind of stupid, but it just seemed the time for a shoutout for my little man. He's been looking at me lately as if to say, "What's happening to me? Any ideas?" And although his nonverbal status makes him an outstanding source of unconditional acceptance and love, I kind of wish he could understand so I could tell him "It's just you're getting older, baby, nothing I can do, but I'll be here to get you through it and I'll throw that goddamned ball til long past the time you can catch it good." I think somehow he knows that, just from the way we've been rolling for more than a decade now. I hope so, anyway.

Comments

[Killer B]

Awww, Laurie. He's such a good buddy. I'm so sorry he's not doing his best these days. You seem like me (in this way, among others) in that you're gonna get him through this, no matter what, and I'm so super glad you have him. Homer the cat saved my life when I was depressed last year. They really are the best friends you can have. Don't discount that bond and how much you want to talk about him. What you wrote is beautiful and shows the best side of us all. And the picture of him with his feet on the table? Oh, I can't even stand it.